eliza schmid

I grew up in post World War II Vienna, Austria, and went to Medical School there. I really wanted to go to the Academy of Art, but my parents discouraged me - later Medical School turned out to be the second best art school in town. Our professors had to draw human anatomy and pathology on huge drawing boards in the lecture halls, and we students ended up drawing each day for years until we graduated. I became a specialist in Pathology and as such received a fellowship to Stanford University in CA in the year 1976. After that I decided to stay in CA and later did a second residency training in psychiatry at the Univ. of CA in Los Angeles. I then worked mostly with the indigent in a County Clinic in Los Angeles. As an artist, I am a latecomer not going to art school until I was close to retirement, but then painting with full force and enthusiasm in order to make up for all those years lost to art. If my first art show in Los Angeles had not sold out, I would have been discouraged and given it up, but instead I moved to Santa Fe in 2002 and continued studying art at the Community college in Santa Fe which turned out to be an excellent art school. I managed to get into many group and solo shows there and in general was considered an fairly good and very enthusiastic painter. After my husband's death, I moved to a smaller house in Albuquerque where I continue to paint and enjoy each day of what is left of my life. I have tried most painting techniques, but presently have settled with larger, mostly abstract oil paintings and small egg tempera work on wood panels. I continue showing my art in galleries, libraries, coffeehouses and love doing it.